Changing Lanes
by SadArticle
Summary: Classic Knight Rider. Coda for 'Knights of the Fast Lane'  season three , one of my favourite episodes. With Kitt's help, Michael is finally ready to say goodbye to his old life.


Changing Lanes

A tag for 'Knights of the Fast Lane' (season 3)

Bonnie Barstow made her usual tour of the garage, switching off monitors and equipment for the night. When she reached the door, she turned to glance over her shoulder at the steady pulse of Kitt's scanner, trying to read emotions in the speed and strength of the red light. It was only a very basic gauge, however, and this time told her nothing. "You're quiet tonight, Kitt," she observed. "Anything wrong?"

"No, Bonnie," Kitt answered. "I need to charge my packs, but there is nothing wrong."

Bonnie narrowed her eyes briefly at the car's windscreen. Michael's grandstanding stunt at the stadium, turbo-boosting over the posts for that 'extra point', had nearly stopped her heart for all the wrong reasons, but Kitt had come through it without any real damage – and she had run every test on computer and vehicle to make sure. Yet her scans and services could only detect problems with physical components, not the personality formed by the sum of their parts; it took an awareness of Kitt's moods to pick up on the changes in his behaviour, and to translate the silences he used to communicate his unease.

"I don't mean technically wrong, Kitt," she continued, opening the driver's door and sinking into Michael's seat. The powered-down dash seemed to curl around her, and Bonnie reached for the steering yoke, her eyes on the voice modulator. "What's he done now?"

There was no bitterness or anger in her voice when she mentioned Michael. She knew him well enough now, and as long as his cockeyed ideas and rash actions didn't cause any lasting damage to Kitt, she could get along with the man, even care for him. But Michael still didn't appreciate just how sensitive the computer at the heart of the Knight 2000 could be. He had learned the hard way that Kitt was not indestructible, and he talked to him as he would to a human partner, but there was never any conflict between Michael's responsibility to Kitt and his instinct to help others: if a life was at risk, then Michael would pull out all the stops to help, even if that meant compromising Kitt in some way. He had matched him against equally powerful foes, given him over to complete strangers, and generally overestimated the machine whilst overlooking the humanity in his partner – and yet Kitt supported Michael's every decision, either because of the logic of his dominant program, or out of misguided loyalty to his 'pal'. Bonnie still hated the situation, but now it was two against one.

"I suppose you mean Michael?"

Bonnie gave a wan smile, letting her hands slip from the yoke and onto her lap. "Himself, indeed. Did you agree to that ridiculous jump?"

"I calculated that the risk was minimal," Kitt replied evenly. "It's not that, Bonnie."

"What is it, then?" she asked, leaping into an opening. "Talk to me, Kitt."

"I wish he could trust me as he obviously once trusted Lieutenant Courtney," Kitt stated plainly.

Bonnie frowned. The automatic reply of 'Of course he trusts you' hovered in her mind, but if she said that, Kitt would just agree with her and close the subject. "Where do you see the difference, Kitt?" she offered instead.

"I'm sure he thinks at times that I cannot comprehend his methods, and that I would interfere, somehow, if he told me what he was planning to do ahead of actually doing it," Kitt explained. "He always seems to have an alternative course of action – his 'Plan B' – that I only learn about if it involves microjamming locks or crashing through walls. Am I his partner, Bonnie – or an oversized Swiss Army knife?"

She had to laugh. "Michael trusts you, Kitt, but he has to do some things for himself." Bonnie mentally shook her head: she was defending Michael Knight! "You're the logic and the support of the team, he's the wild card. But he always knows he can count on you, Kitt – we all do."

The modulator remained dark for a beat. "He didn't seem to want to admit to Lieutenant Courtney that I was his partner," Kitt confided. "I was monitoring for Michael at the stadium. When he reactivated me, I heard the lieutenant ask him if I was 'another partner'. Michael said I wasn't, that I was just 'someone on the inside'."

So that was it. "Oh, Kitt," Bonnie sighed. If only she could share with Michael her years of watching Kitt evolve from one processor in a vast mainframe to the sentient, caring, _feeling_ artificial intelligence he so easily took for granted today. "He was probably just affected by meeting another face from his old life, Kitt – Courtney meant a lot to him."

"And he is still important to Michael," Kitt reasoned; "he did not wish to offend or reject him."

"Kitt, Michael wasn't protecting Lieutenant Courtney's feelings, he was – he was protecting his own," Bonnie said softly.

"I don't understand."

"Lieutenant Courtney didn't know he was talking to Michael _Long_, Kitt, so it would have made no difference to him if Michael had told him he had a new partner," she instructed, trying to simplify the complex human emotions that had caused Michael to regress, however temporarily. "The only person who knew of their shared history was Michael himself – and if he lied about you, it was just because he needed to pretend for a brief moment that he was Officer Long again, for whatever reason. It doesn't mean that he doesn't want you as a partner, only that life was very different for him when he was working with Lieutenant Courtney."

"And Michael wanted to return to that time?"

"I don't think so, Kitt" Bonnie mused; "maybe just to the security of being with somebody so familiar. His ties to the past were cut when Wilton Knight saved his life, but that doesn't mean he's forgotten that he was once Michael Long."

Kitt was silent again as he processed this new information. "Perhaps Lieutenant Courtney _did_ know it was Michael Long he was talking to – he said '_another_ partner'," he finally answered, speaking so quietly that his voice barely registered on the panel.

"No, Kitt, he didn't know," she corrected him. "He couldn't."

"He gave him back his old police ID and badge," Kitt prompted.

"A gesture, to thank him for proving that Mark Taylor was the one who hurt Stacy," Bonnie suggested vaguely, frowning at a point beyond the windscreen. "They worked together for a couple of years, and then Michael made detective and left for Nevada. Kitt, there's no special bond there, don't worry."

"Michael told Devon that Lieutenant Courtney was more like a second father to him," the computer persisted. "The attachments that human beings form with each other outside of familial units are just as strong and enduring as those dictated by blood, I have observed, and the loyalty and affection of a friend is earned, not unconditional."

"Michael is very lucky to have you as a friend, Kitt."

"I didn't mean –"

"I know you were talking generally, Kitt, but it's true," Bonnie insisted, reaching out a hand to touch the smooth sweep of the dash. "And whether he knows it or not, he needs you."

Michael Knight sat in the second-hand armchair by the window, his familiar corner of a foreign land, and studied Jim Courtney's parting gift to him. He remembered the pride of receiving this badge, as well as the mingled heartache and spirit of adventure in handing it over to his sergeant and mentor when he left for pastures new, and now it had come full circle. But did he have a right to reclaim the memories and the loyalties symbolised in the gold shield and ID card of Michael Long? He thought he had adjusted to his new life, but seeing the face of Jimbo's daughter on Kitt's screen had jarred his sense of self, and he had been thrown back to a time before Wilton Knight and the Foundation.

It hadn't been like losing his memory; this relapse was emotional, not neurological. When a blow to his head had made him forget who he had become, the conflict was felt by those around him: Devon had smoothed over the legal ramifications of a dead man returned to life, and Kitt had continued to protect a driver who no longer recognised his strongest ally. This time around, the struggle had been his alone, and it pained Michael to admit that his allegiance had wavered. He owed Devon, Bonnie, and especially Kitt so much more than this figure from his past, but standing in that hospital corridor, the bond with Courtney had seemed the stronger of the two associations.

Had Jimbo felt it, too? Tracing the contours of the California PD shield with his thumb, Michael thought of how natural their collaboration at the stadium had been, as if nothing had changed between them. Michael had followed the older man's lead, and after his two previous warnings to stop interfering with police business, Courtney had suddenly accepted and acted upon Michael's word – Kitt's word. They had both been in a sort of time warp, a nostalgic trance that had let them work together like old times, with shared experience and determination. It could have been just the adrenaline of the situation, and Courtney's desperate need as a father and a cop to find out who was responsible for Stacy's accident, but then Courtney had handed over Michael's old badge. _Did I just remind him of Michael Long_, he thought, _or did he recognise me?_

Michael closed the leather wallet, smoothing over its worn edges, and laid it down on the windowsill beside him. He would never learn the truth about what had passed between himself and Jim Courtney, because it was a safe bet that the other man was also at a loss to explain his connection with a young loner named Michael Knight, but there was still one partner that he needed to talk to before he could settle with the past.

"Mr Knight?" Michael turned at the heavy footsteps behind him.

"Yeah, Carl, it's me," he told the guard. "I forgot something in the car, I won't be a second."

"That's OK, Mr Knight," Carl said, dismissing Michael's reply with a wave of his large hand.

"Just had to check who was near the garage, that's all. I'll head back, now."

"Thanks, Carl," Michael called after the retreating figure.

He hated being addressed as 'Mr Knight' by the Foundation staff, inferring that he had stepped into some rather wealthy and powerful shoes, but he couldn't shake the formality of some of the security personnel, however frequently he insisted on 'Michael'.

As he approached the side door of the deceptively ordinary garage building, the pulsing red sensor of the security system triggered floodlights mounted above the cameras and the doors, scattering the settling shadows of early evening with stark illumination. Squinting against the glare, Michael pressed his palm to the print identification pad, aware that the lens steadily scanning him from above was not connected to the Foundation's closed-circuit security system, but to Kitt.

The door popped open, and Michael stepped into the cool space of Kitt's garage bay. Emergency lighting lifted the liquid black of Kitt's shell out of the surrounding gloom, tracing the sleek curves of the hood, and Michael had to admire the beauty of the machine as it glinted in the shadows.

Bonnie had tried to drill into him from the start that Kitt - the Knight Industries 2000 – was the onboard computer and not the car, but even though he had seen his partner separated from the powerful body that housed his CPU, it was still a vague distinction for Michael. When he thought of Kitt, he thought of the power and protection of the car that still reminded him of his old Pontiac Trans-Am, not of the compact casing and flashing lights of the computer, and yet he was also aware of the individual personality that set Kitt apart from any other 'set of wheels'. His partner was at once the heart of the vehicle, controlling and monitoring more systems than Michael was aware of, and an undefined 'presence' in his life. The voice modulator gave him a 'face', and that reassuring voice travelled with Michael via the comlink, but Kitt had also become so much more than the technology that had created him.

Another beam of red light locked onto Michael, and then the scanner mounted on the low prow of the machine began to flow smoothly from side to side. Inside the car, the dash came to life, its displays and controls activating in a routine sequence that started with the central column above the steering yoke – with Kitt. Yet the 'Sleeping Beauty' performance didn't fool Michael, who knew that his approach to the garage had been noticed by more than just a security guard on night patrol.

"Michael!" Kitt announced, opening the door as his driver reached for the handle. "What are you doing here?"

Michael smiled at the casual greeting. "I told the guard that I forgot something in the car," he said. "I forgot you."

There was a pause, and Michael imagined Kitt analysing those three words for every possible meaning, literal and implied, before he answered. "You forgot me?"

"Yeah, partner," he sighed, leaning back. "When I handed you over to Taylor last night – I should have told you what I was planning."

Another hesitation. "What has Bonnie said to you?"

Michael frowned, sitting straight again. "Bonnie?"

"You haven't spoken with her?" Kitt asked.

"No, I –" What had he been telling his technician? "I've been in my room. Bonnie went home."

"Then it doesn't matter," Kitt said, the correct pronunciation of his speech softened by what sounded to Michael like a sigh of relief. "Nor does your race with Mark Taylor – you did what you had to do, and it worked," he added, though not as easily he had passed on the subject of Bonnie.

Michael sank back into the seat, drawing his other leg into the car. "Wanna go for a drive?" he asked, pulling the door closed. There was a unique thrill in piloting the car that not even a life spent on the road could diminish: the sensitive control of incredible speed and force intelligently assisted by computer, but also the traditional satisfaction of hugging the road behind a powerful engine.

"Of course, Michael," Kitt replied, shutting down various diagnostics and subroutines that Bonnie had requested he run overnight. He didn't want to treat Michael as merely another program. "Where shall we go?"

The engine growled into life. "I want to show you something, Kitt," Michael told him, waiting for the garage door to slide up and over. "Let me take it," he added needlessly, his hand on the yoke.

Kitt switched the control panel to manual, releasing the car to his partner.

Driving through the quiet residential streets of their own neighbourhood, Kitt could only speculate on their destination. He limited his input to the barest minimum and became a passenger, letting the car respond to Michael's guidance instead of anticipating his commands. They were working together again, and Kitt was content to share the responsibility.

"Nothing like a starlit night, hey, pal?" Michael announced.

The desert, Kitt thought. "It will be, once we're out of the city," he hinted.

Michael turned onto the freeway. "I don't mind the bright lights."

They were approaching downtown Los Angeles, where the only constellations to be seen were manmade. Glittering buildings reached into the polluted grey of the sky, and the road ahead shimmered with red taillights. The panorama was brilliant but had it been his selection, Kitt would have chosen solitude over civilisation.

"It's attractive enough, I suppose," he offered, talking to fill the silence, "especially at night. Aside from the reduced traffic and the cover of darkness, it's easy to see why Mr Taylor chose the city streets as his race track."

Michael glanced at the modulator. "Got a taste for the Banzai, partner?"

"Not after losing my first race, no," Kitt replied. "The last time I felt so powerless, I was in a television set!"

"I lost the race, pal, not you," Michael corrected him. "Shutting you down was part of the plan, I couldn't risk Taylor making the connection and raising the stakes."

"You might have relied on me to protect myself, Michael," Kitt grumbled. "After all, how many times have I been assaulted by amateurs with drills and crowbars?"

Michael smiled. "You always look out for yourself, there's no doubt about that," he agreed.

"And what about looking out for you, Michael?" Kitt countered. "I was worried about you, walking off alone like that."

"You saw that?" Michael asked, frowning at the dash.

"It's the last visual I have in my databanks before you reactivated me in Taylor's garage."

Kitt accessed the memory of his partner taking a last look over his shoulder at the slowing track of the scanner, and heard him tell Taylor 'Take care of it' after handing over the keys. Fighting against his own programming, Kitt had maintained surveillance until the last command of the emergency shut-down sequence had closed him off from the outside world, and from Michael. Locked inside the shell of the car, not knowing where he was being taken or for how long, Kitt had held onto the last audio he had on file: 'Hang in there, buddy'.

Michael sighed. "Sorry, pal," he told the modulator. "I guess I keep forgetting that I don't work alone. We're a team."

Kitt brooded on this for a minute. Perhaps 'team' was a better description of their working relationship than 'partners'. They were on the same side, working together for a common cause, but then so were Devon and Bonnie at the Foundation. He and Michael had been created by the same man, but did programming really demonstrate the same level of commitment as giving over your old life to another man's dream? His driver had memories beyond his 'reactivation' as Michael Knight, Kitt realise, and it was for the AI to prove his worth alongside men like Lieutenant Courtney.

"I'm only as good as the information I am given, Michael," Kitt said, reminding him for the first time in years of his basic function. "For instance – had I known from leaving the garage where you were heading, I could have pointed out the appropriate exit. As it is, we are still on the freeway."

"That's where we need to be, pal," Michael breezed.

"Then –"

The sleek black car shot through the tangle of roads at the Interchange, where the Pasadena freeway became the Harbor freeway, and Kitt immediately knew their route like he had plotted it himself. Probably because he had, 87 times in three years.

"Michael, the beach? In the middle of the night?"

"Call it a sort of – anniversary," Michael said, taking the exit towards San Pedro. "And I promise we don't have to drive on the sand!"

The sloping road curved down and around the rocky hillside, leading to the seafront. It was here where they had once tested April's 'aquatic synthesiser', and watched KARR's destruction from the cliffs above. Kitt couldn't decide which experience had impacted him the most, but he did know that the bays in this area still held a powerful attraction for his driver.

Michael pulled up smoothly at the edge of the pavement, nosing the car out into the darkness, and switched off the engine. The headlights sank back into the hood, but a red light continued to pulse back and forth on the prow. Kitt's many powerful sensors registered salt spray from the pounding waves and a distinct odour of brine in the chill night air, but the computer was simply grateful that Michael had kept his word and his distance from the beach itself. He waited.

"Kitt, this is my goodbye place."

The computer panicked, causing his olfactory sensor and five other subroutines to crash. "What did you say?"

Michael held his hands up. "I _meant_, that this is where I came to say goodbye, five years ago," he quickly explained. "When I moved out to Nevada. And before that, leaving for the Forces, and Vietnam. This is where I come to say goodbye."

"I see," Kitt acknowledged blandly. "And is there some significance to this particular visit?"

"Only that I don't think I did it right, that last time," Michael said, holding onto the yoke as Bonnie had done a few hours earlier. "Seeing Stacy's picture in the paper was a shock, I can tell you. She was like my kid sister when I was working my rookie beat with Jimbo – with Lieutenant Courtney. All I wanted to do was help her, help _him_, and he wouldn't let me." He shook his head and sighed. "He didn't know me."

Kitt monitored his driver's face in the glow from the instruments, observing the knot between Michael's eyebrows as he stared out to sea. Was this something else that he had to do for himself, or did he need a friend?

"He trusted you when it mattered," Kitt volunteered. "And you did help him."

Michael looked at the modulator. "_We_ helped him. Thanks, Kitt," he added, resting his hand on the curve of the dash.

"That's what I'm here for," Kitt replied. "Remember that, please, the next time you go running headlong into danger without me."

"I always know you're right behind me, Kitt, that's why I do it."

The scanner lit up from end to end, a signal flashed to the rocks and the dark sea beyond, and then fell back to trailing from side to side.

"Have you said goodbye?"

Michael brushed his fingers over the Knight Industries emblem on the yoke, tracing the raised shape of the black-on-red design. "I think it's all been said before, Kitt," he said softly.

"Then can we move on, please?" The voice modulator flashed indignantly. "Cars belong on the road, not in harbour."

"Let's go, partner."

END


End file.
